Twenty-one years ago yesterday I became leader of the Labour party. A lot has happened since then. We discovered winning successively. And now we have rediscovered losing successively. Personally I prefer winning. I could make a speech to you about how to win. You win from the centre; you win when you appeal to a broad cross-section of the public;...

The single most important foundation stone for Labour’s recovery is a renewed commitment to a strong economy, and that means governing in facts, not in wishful thinking. Harriet Harman did Labour a massive favour by shaking the party from its dream state over welfare and thrusting it back into the brutal reality of our predicament: not in government, not even...

Liz Kendall has called for power to be devolved to the nations, cities, towns and counties of Britain. Speaking in Brixton this week, she committed to handing power to local communities and evoked the Labour party’s historic tradition of civic leaders, community organisers and workplace activists fighting against poverty and injustice. She was absolutely right to stress that ‘our answer...

The Labour party leadership contest is a hot mess. What began as a promising debate about the future has now become a political middle that Labour has always been prone to in its century-long history. As the Tories capitalise on their famous victory with ‘tanks on Labour’s lawn’, these are desperate times for the Labour party. Back in the 1980s,...